Finding the Best Translation App for Elementor: Which One Is Right for You?

Creating a multilingual website with Elementor brings unique challenges that require specialized translation solutions. Whether you're expanding globally or serving a diverse local audience, choosing the right translation app can make the difference between a successful multilingual site and a frustrated user base.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the leading translation apps for Elementor and help you determine which one best suits your needs. We'll compare features, pricing, and real-world performance to give you a clear picture of what each solution offers.

Why Growing Your Business Through Translation Makes Sense

Much like working out a muscle, your business can grow through different means. Marketing is always going to be a priority, as is offering different product lines.

However, one way you can explode your business' growth is through expanding into new markets. This means you need to find the right methodology to translate your site's content to meet the expectations and needs of these new locales.

In fact, with the correct approach, implementing a proper translation strategy can impact your business in significant ways:

• Market expansion. You can reach new audiences in their preferred language, as though your business is 'native' to the area.
• An improved User Experience (UX). A by-product of a successful expansion also lets you create experiences for international visitors that feel natural and organic.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefits. You should be able to rank in local search results for different markets, and capture new organic search traffic.
• Increased conversions. You stand to improve your conversion rates if users get to interact in their chosen language.

To touch on this a little more, 76% of consumers prefer to purchase products with information in their own language. With three in every four customers looking for content in a different language, translation is therefore a crucial investment for growth.

Understanding the Translation Needs for an Elementor-Powered Website

WordPress is a fantastic platform for building a website, especially when you consider its extensibility. A page builder plugin such as Elementor can give you tremendous flexibility in design and functionality.

However, neither WordPress or Elementor provides the direct functionality to translate your content. As such, there are specific challenges you need to address if you want to bring multilinguality to your WordPres website:

• Dynamic content management. Elementor's dynamic content functionality requires a translation solution that can handle both static and dynamic elements without a hitch.
• Element compatibility. Your translation solution needs to work effectively with Elementor's wide range of modules and elements.
• Design consistency. It's crucial to maintain a consistent design across different language versions, while also accommodating varying text lengths and character sets.
• Performance impact. Whatever translation solution you use, its own functionality shouldn't compromise your site's speed or performance.

The best translation app for Elementor will need to address these challenges. In addition, it also has to provide an experience on the back- and front-ends that focuses on the user and visitor. Fortunately, there are a number of plugins and apps to consider.

Finding the Perfect Translation App for Elementor

As you'd expect, there are several key factors in play when evaluating translation apps for Elementor. Let's break down how apps might differ, then get into the primary options in detail.

What Sets Each Solution Apart

Because Elementor is a WordPress plugin at its core, the integration for the various translation solutions is consistent. All of the plugins we'll feature let you connect to each service through the WordPress dashboard, with solution-specific differences of course.

While most of the plugins we cover offer visual editing options, none implement them in the same way. This is important because the interface and experience will have a direct impact on your workflow and efficiency. Ultimately, you want as much integration with Elementor as possible, rather than working across multiple editing screens.

Multilingual SEO can be a tortuous task at the best of times. There is so much to understand and implement, such as hreflang tags, site structure, and much more. This is where you'd want to know what a translation solution does to bolster Elementor's own SEO functionality for multiple languages.

For instance, does the plugin carry out essential SEO jobs behind the scenes for you, or do you have to undertake the work yourself? There is no right or wrong approach necessarily, although you'll likely want to opt for the right one based on your needs.

Finally, the cost of a solution should be a consideration. However, we'd argue that if the plugin does everything you need in the right way, the cost will have the best value.

4 Elementor Translation Apps Compared: Quick Summary

Before diving into specific solutions, here's a comparison of critical features across the top translation apps for Elementor:

As the table shows, there's a lot to consider when it comes to choosing the best translation app for Elementor. Without further ado, let's take a look!

4 Elementor Translation Apps Compared: In Detail

Let's examine each translation solution in detail to understand their strengths and limitations. To start, we're going to look at the best translation app for Elementor—in our opinion, naturally!

From there, we have three other translation plugins to run through. After, we'll showcase how you'd set up Weglot with your Elementor website.

1. Weglot

When it comes to WordPress and Elementor, Weglot is an established website translation solution. It serves thousands of global businesses both within and outside the space, which includes major brands such as Microsoft, Amazon MGM Studios, and Nikon.

As for compatibility with Elementor, Weglot offers an impressive array of features and functionality:

• Complete and continuous content detection. It automatically detects and translates all Elementor elements, including dynamic widgets and custom fields, including changes and new content. This dynamic content support also looks after your theme's template parts.
• A Visual Editor. You're able to edit translations within a live preview of your Elementor pages, which will maintain context around your design choices.
• Automated SEO management. Weglot generates hreflang tags, metadata translation and creates subdirectories for your translated pages without the need for your input. This is a huge, time-saving element that will also produce far fewer errors and hold-ups.
• Translation memory functionality. On some premium plans, Weglot will store and reuse previously translated content for consistency. The memory searches for similar strings of phrases and will translate them to your set requirements.

Once installed, Weglot generates a first layer of 'neural translation' courtesy of leading providers such as DeepL, Google Translate, and Microsoft Translator. You (of course) have the ability to further refine those translations using Weglot's functionality.

Weglot will also detect and translate new content as you add it to your site. This saves you time from having to re-translate your content into all your target languages. In combination, this makes Weglot suitable if you need a quick, efficient, and high-quality way to launch a multilingual site.

Pricing

Weglot's pricing structure is straightforward and scalable. There are five plans to choose from, starting from $17 per month for 10,000 words and one language. This scales up to the Extended plan: $769 per month for 5,000,000 words and 20 translated languages. Regardless, all plans include core features such as visual editing, SEO tools, and first-layer machine translation, with higher tiers adding advanced features and analytics.

2. WPML: The WordPress Veterans' Choice

The WordPress Multilingual Plugin (WPML) is one of the oldest and most established translation plugins in the WordPress ecosystem—millions of sites use the solution. As such, WPML has a reputation for stability and comprehensive WordPress integration.

For Elementor websites, WPML provides several key features:

• It translates all Elementor elements and widgets.
• There's a built-in connection to professional translation services (just like Weglot).
• You have detailed control over every translatable element.
• WPML offers comprehensive handling of custom fields and post types.

WPML will suit large organizations and agencies that need robust translation workflow management. However, it does have a more complex UI in comparison to the alternatives, with a steeper learning curve if you're a new user. There's also a front-end visual representation of your on-site translations, but it doesn't have the level of integration as Weglot does.

WPML offers three main pricing tiers. The Blog plan is €39 per year, but includes only core functionality. Instead, you'll want to opt for either the CMS tier at €99 per year or the Agency plan at €159 per year. These both give you full functionality, but scale the number of translation credits and sites you can run.

3. TranslatePress: Visual Translation Made Simple

TranslatePress has gained popularity as a user-friendly translation solution that focuses on visual, front-end translation in a similar way to Weglot—albeit with some differences. There are hundreds and thousands of WordPress sites that use TranslatePress.

If you choose to integrate TranslatePress with Elementor, you can leverage the entire feature set of the plugin:

• The visual translator lets you work with the content in place on the front end of your site.
• You have automatic translation courtesy of Google Translate and DeepL.
• The plugin gives you support for language-specific images and WordPress gettext dynamic strings.

TranslatePress will be ideal in situations where you want to handle translations in-house. Typically, this will be small to medium-sized businesses that prioritize ease of use and a visual translation experience.

Unlike Weglot (and other solutions) though, TranslatePress tucks essential functionality away behind premium add-ons.

What's more, you'll likely need to work with a more complex SEO plugin as the available options are basic. This, in combination with some limitations with workflow functionality, means you should consider whether TranslatePress is scalable for your needs.

As for pricing, the structure is simple. You pay €99 for a single-site license, with two other tiers giving you a selection of add-ons and extra site licenses. These cost around €199-439 per year.

4. Polylang: The Free Alternative

Polylang serves nearly a quarter of a million WordPress users with its free translation plugin. Users like its lightweight approach and integration with WordPress' core functionality.

However, Elementor and Polylang don't integrate directly. With the Connect Polylang for Elementor plugin though, you have a way to link both solutions. This gives you the following functionality within the page builder:

• You're able to add translations to Elementor's posts and pages through the editing screen. This also applies to Elementor templates.
• Dynamic tags are available for each language you work with.
• You'll see Polylang links within the Elementor Finder feature, which is convenient and handy for efficiency.
• There's a language switcher Element available to add this to your site without cumbersome workarounds.

Even so, this might not be the smoothest setup. You have to rely on a third-party plugin for integration between Polylang and Elementor, and won't get all of the available functionality. The best use case is for small websites with basic translation needs.

You might also want to consider this if you have a dedicated professional translator on your team, as there is no automatic translation available.

As for pricing, Polylang's free version offers core functionality, which could be tempting. From there, you have Polylang Pro at €99 per year for a single-site license. This adds further support for the WordPress REST API, Advanced Custom Fields Pro, and lets you duplicate posts across languages.

If you run WooCommerce, you'll also want to buy Polylang's dedicated add-on that starts from €99 for a single-site license. This gives you the ability to work with products too alongside regular content. Both of these can be bought as a bundle that starts at €139 per month.

Making Translation Work for Your Site

Once you choose the best translation app for Elementor based on your needs, you can begin to integrate it with your Elementor instance. Most solutions should have an intuitive process, but Weglot has deep integration and a workflow that takes minutes to set up.

We’ve created two full tutorials to show you how to set up Elementor and Weglot, based on your preference:

• Our full guide on setting up Weglot and Elementor will give you all the information you need to set things up.
• If you like a video walkthrough, the Weglot YouTube channel has a guide too.

In fact, in the past, the Elementor team has also offered a guide on using both platforms, so you have multiple ways to work with Weglot.

Frequently Asked Questions About Translating Your Elementor Website

There are some aspects we haven't touched upon when it comes to translating your Elementor and WordPress website. To finish the article, let's go over a few of these topics in brief.

How complex is the integration process?

Most translation apps offer a straightforward integration with Elementor, although there will always be differences. For instance, Weglot's setup takes minutes, even when you consider installing and setting up the companion WordPress plugin.

What determines the cost of a translation app?

Pricing for each translation app for Elementor typically depends on a number of factors. With Weglot, we go by the number of words you need to translate and the languages you want to translate to. Other solutions may have different metrics.

Can I use automatic translation for my entire site?

With solutions such as Polylang, automatic translation isn't available with Elementor integration. In contrast, Weglot translates the entirety of your site's content, However, we still recommend you review and refine any machine translations, especially for crucial translated pages such as product descriptions and legal notices.

What kind of support can I expect?

As with price, support varies by provider and the premium plan you choose. For instance, Weglot provides email support for all customers, extensive documentation, an academy, and more. Other solutions will save priority support for higher tiered plans.

Conclusion

If you want the best translation app for Elementor, Weglot is the most comprehensive solution for most users. It combines a simple integration process with powerful functionality. What's more, its user-centric interface makes it particularly well-suited for Elementor websites.

You can start translating your Elementor site with a 10-day free trial, then purchase a premium plan from only $17 per month.